Lady Audleys Secret | Page 7

part of his face. He was tall and
powerfully built; he wore a loose gray suit and a felt hat, thrown
carelessly upon his black hair. His name was George Talboys, and he
was aft-cabin passenger on board the good ship Argus, laden with
Australian wool and sailing from Sydney to Liverpool.
There were very few passengers in the aft-cabin of the Argus. An
elderly wool-stapler returning to his native country with his wife and
daughters, after having made a fortune in the colonies; a governess of
three-and-thirty years of age, going home to marry a man to whom she
had been engaged fifteen years; the sentimental daughter of a wealthy
Australian wine-merchant, invoiced to England to finish her education,

and George Talboys, were the only first-class passengers on board.
This George Talboys was the life and soul of the vessel; nobody knew
who or what he was, or where he came from, but everybody liked him.
He sat at the bottom of the dinner-table, and assisted the captain in
doing the honors of the friendly meal. He opened the champagne
bottles, and took wine with every one present; be told funny stories,
and led the life himself with such a joyous peal that the man must have
been a churl who could not have laughed for pure sympathy. He was a
capital hand at speculation and vingt-et-un, and all the merry games,
which kept the little circle round the cabin-lamp so deep in innocent
amusement, that a hurricane might have howled overhead without their
hearing it; but he freely owned that he had no talent for whist, and that
he didn't know a knight from a castle upon the chess-board.
Indeed, Mr. Talboys was by no means too learned a gentleman. The
pale governess had tried to talk to him about fashionable literature, but
George had only pulled his beard and stared very hard at her, saying
occasionally, "Ah, yes, by Jove!" and "To be sure, ah!"
The sentimental young lady, going home to finish her education, had
tried him with Shelby and Byron, and he had fairly laughed in her face,
as if poetry where a joke. The woolstapler sounded him on politics, but
he did not seem very deeply versed in them; so they let him go his own
way, smoke his cigars and talk to the sailors, lounge over the bulwarks
and stare at the water, and make himself agreeable to everybody in his
own fashion. But when the Argus came to be within about a fortnight's
sail of England everybody noticed a change in George Talboys. He
grew restless and fidgety; sometimes so merry that the cabin rung with
his laughter; sometimes moody and thoughtful. Favorite as he was
among the sailors, they were tired at last of answering his perpetual
questions about the probable time of touching land. Would it be in ten
days, in eleven, in twelve, in thirteen? Was the wind favorable? How
many knots an hour was the vessel doing? Then a sudden passion
would sieze him, and he would stamp upon the deck, crying out that
she was a rickety old craft, and that her owners were swindlers to
advertise her as the fast-sailing Argus. She was not fit for passenger

traffic; she was not fit to carry impatient living creatures, with hearts
and souls; she was fit for nothing but to be laden with bales of stupid
wool, that might rot on the sea and be none the worse for it.
The sun was drooping down behind the waves as George Talboys
lighted his cigar upon this August evening. Only ten days more, the
sailors had told him that afternoon, and they would see the English
coast. "I will go ashore in the first boat that hails us," he cried; "I will
go ashore in a cockle-shell. By Jove, if it comes to that, I will swim to
land."
His friends in the aft-cabin, with the exception of the pale governess,
laughed at his impatience; she sighed as she watched the young man,
chafing at the slow hours, pushing away his untasted wine, flinging
himself restlessly about upon the cabin sofa, rushing up and down the
companion ladder, and staring at the waves.
As the red rim of the sun dropped into the water, the governess
ascended the cabin stairs for a stroll on deck, while the passengers sat
over their wine below. She stopped when she came up to George, and,
standing by his side, watched the fading crimson in the western sky.
The lady was very quiet and reserved, seldom sharing in the after-cabin
amusements, never laughing, and speaking very little; but she and
George Talboys had been excellent friends throughout the passage.
"Does my cigar annoy you, Miss Morley?" he said, taking it out of his
mouth.
"Not